Chinese
Language: Introduction

The Chinese language is a tonal language
and often regarded as a member of the
Sino-Tibetan family of languages. Although
Chinese is often mistaken as a single
language, the regional variation of Spoken
Chinese can be different enough to be
mutually incomprehensible.

Chinese can refer to Spoken Chinese
and Written Chinese. By the Spoken Chinese,
there were seven main regional groups
including Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese,
or Hakka. Not only do they greatly differ
in pronunciation, about 25% to 50% difference
in their grammer and vocabulary are notable
enough to raise a doubt if all Chinese
dialects come from the same language
family.

Learn Chinese Language:
Lessons from Chinese
History

However, Chinese always share a common
Written form and characters, at least
Since Qin Shi Huang have united all Chinese
nations in BC 200s. Before 19-20th Century,
the common written form was Literary
Chinese (Classical Chinese) that no one
spoke as mother tongue. Until 20th Century,
the baihuawen movement pushed the birth
of the new written form Vernacular Chinese,
based on Mandarin.

How Many People Speak and
learn Chinese

About one-fifth of the people in the
world speak some forms of Chinese as
their native language, making it the
language with the most native speakers.
The Chinese language, spoken in the form
of Standard Mandarin, is the official
language of the People's Republic of
China and the Republic of China on Taiwan,
as well as one of four official languages
of Singapore, and one of six official
languages of the United Nations. Spoken
in the form of Standard Cantonese, Chinese
is one of the official languages of Hong
Kong (together with English) and of Macau
(together with Portuguese) and is a spoken
language in Singapore (together with
Mandarin, English, Bahasa Melayu (i.e.
Malay), and Tamil).

Among Chinese diaspora, Cantonese is
the common language one can hear in Chinatowns,
thanks to early immigrants from the Southern
China. However, the rise of Northern
and Taiwanese immigrants pushed Mandarin
getting more common today.

Chinese Language in writing
and speech

The terms and concepts used by Chinese
to separate spoken language from written
language are different from those used
in the West, because of differences in
the political and social development
of China in comparison with Europe. Whereas
Europe fragmented into smaller nation-states
after the fall of the Roman Empire, the
identities of which were often defined
by language, China was able to preserve
cultural and political unity through
the same period, and maintained a common
written language throughout its entire
history, despite the fact that its actual
diversity in spoken language has always
been comparable to Europe. As a result,
Chinese makes a sharp distinction between "written
language" (wén; 文 ) and "spoken
language" (y ǔ ; 语 / 語 ). The concept
of a distinct and unified combination
of both written and spoken forms of language
is therefore much stronger in the West
than in